Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer stirred up the business media with an edict to abolish telecommuting among Yahoo! employees. Despite the fact that online collaboration tools have never been as effective as they are today, Mayer claimed the decision was about creating a culture of collaboration. She also claimed her decision only affected about two hundred people, but elsewhere Mayer complained about empty parking lots, as well as rows and rows of empty cubicles. Lastly, Mayer claimed it was about productivity, but her CFO’s analysis of VPN logs indicated the decision had more to do with a conviction that telecommuters were displaying a poor work ethic. Mayer’s policy forced several employees to put their small children in day care, but Mayer herself had a private nursery built right next to her office.
Because of the controversy surrounding the Mayer edict, observers have taken a keen interest in the value found (or lost) in both the conventional office and the home office. As someone who works from home often, I am familiar with both the benefits and pitfalls of telecommuting. These same pitfalls are felt to varying degrees by every multi-site enterprise. Here are six ways to reduce or even eliminate those pitfalls, either as an individual exercising these behaviors, or as a company fostering a corporate culture that expects these behaviors from everyone.
